Hearing those three little words from your partner is an important relationship milestone and a sign of greater relationship commitment, sowhen my BF told me that he was in love with me, I was ecstatic beause I felt the same way about him. I had no idea that my bliss was only meant to last for one night.
- I told all my friends pretty much immediately. I was so in love and it felt amazing that he was on the same page, so I wasted no time in telling my friends about it. They were so happy for me, especially because they’d worried that my boyfriend was dragging his feet when it came to making a real commitment. Suddenly, they could see he was actually serious about me.
- I loved the way he did it. We’d gone out for dinner and drank some wine together, then we went out for a moonlit walk and he told me how crazy he was about me. He sang my praises like he’d never done before and I thought we were really taking things to the next level.
- I saw him the next day. The day after I told all my friends about what he’d said, I went to see my boyfriend at his place. We had plans to have a quiet night in and chill together. I was looking forward to it. Unfortunately, he opened the door and said those dreaded words: “We have to talk.” That’s how he greeted me. It shook me. I was scared something bad had happened, but I didn’t think it would be anything about us. I thought we were in a solid place.
- He told me he’d messed up when he was drunk. Apparently he’d been drunker than I’d thought during our date when he told me he loved me. He now told me that he sometimes got a little too drunk and said things that he wasn’t supposed to. Wait, what? So him telling me that he loved me wasn’t true? Apparently so. He didn’t say those words exactly, but it was clear that he was now taking back his declaration. I was so hurt and shocked. How do you take back those feelings unless they weren’t there to begin with? This was too much to process.
- I stormed out. I was angry and I didn’t want to sit with him on that sofa anymore, especially not with him looking at me with that pitying look in his eyes. I couldn’t believe he’d do something like this to me. It was so humiliating! I ran out of his house like I was on fire. I really needed time to be on my own.
- He bombarded me with texts. Instead of allowing me some space, he sent me tons of texts trying to explain what had happened. Honestly, it just made me feel worse. He said he didn’t want to rush into anything with me as we’d only been dating for about a year. But he could love me in future, which was supposed to be a consolation. I know that taking things slow can be good in a relationship, but we’d been dating for a year! The fact that he wanted to start taking things slow now was a big red flag.
- There were bigger problems here. It was obvious that the issue wasn’t that he told me he loved me when he really didn’t. (As if that wasn’t bad enough, right?) The real, heart-ripping issue was that he wasn’t keen on committing to me even though we’d been dating for an entire year. That was a whole year of my life gone to this guy.
- Could he really blame the booze? I know booze affects people differently (drunk texts, anyone?) but it just felt weird that he’d change his thoughts and feelings about me when he went from sober to drunk. It made me feel like he lied to me. It made me feel like he was playing games with my heart. How could I ever trust him, even when he was sober? You can’t tell someone you love them and then take it back. It’s childish and irresponsible and I deserve better.
- A few weeks later, we had a replay. This time, he was sober and we’d had a romantic evening without booze crashing the party. He then gave me a big kiss and told me that he loved me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t enjoy the freaking moment because of the bad memory of when he’d told me under the influence and then changed his mind. I didn’t know if I could trust him and I knew right then I had to give him three words I dreaded having to say: our relationship’s over.
- It sounds harsh, but… The trust was gone. I couldn’t seem to get over how humiliating and hurtful it was to go through that experience. Maybe my ego was bruised, but it was more than that. It wasn’t cool to have to keep wondering if he was just telling me he loved me now because he felt bad for how he’d told me the first time. I couldn’t deal with the confusion.
